3 Chicks Review Comics is a podcast featuring female comics lovers and bloggers Sue from DC Women Kicking Ass and Kelly Thompson from She Has No Head! Tune in to CSBG every other Monday at noon as we review comics and discuss hot topics of the week. In addition to the blogs above, you can also follow us all on twitter as well: Kelly and Sue. Special thanks to Nik Furious for our awesome 3 Chicks theme song.

*As always beware of spoilers if you haven’t read the books in question!

Herring

I just thought I’d throw my two cents in on the new 52 sales. I generally agree with Sue that DC have cemented their high profile comics at the top of the ongoing sales. Especially Batman and Justice League, which look like they’ll be well above 100 K for the foreseeable future. Avengers vs X-Men is outselling them at the moment, but that’s an event comic – the flagship ongoing comics in marvel are selling rather poorly in comparison to DC’s (e.g. 69 K for uncanny x-men vs 130 K for batman).

DC’s other comics are more of a mixed bag. I believe around 31 of them are currently selling over 25 K units, so that leaves 22 of the original new 52 that didn’t find a sustainable audience after 9 issues. I’ve been particularly disappointed with the performance of Birds of Prey, though it seems to have been given a reprieve by the “night of the owls” event/crossover. I’m a bit worried as to whether it can retain these new readers after the event wraps up.

Because it’s easier to to look at pictures than trawl icv2, here’s a graph of selected new 52 sales: batman, some of the best female character books,and the most controversial ones (catwoman/red hood and the outlaws/voodoo axis of evil).http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/926/new52v.png

Note all the series involved in the “night of the owls” jump up by virtually the same amount on issue 9, so there’s probably a dedicated block of fans that’s buying every tie-in issue. That’s part of what worries me about “bird of prey”. I don’t see the tie-in fans buying all those extra issues long term, so sales might drop back fairly quickly. If their is one bright side to that, it’d be that batwoman won’t be out sold by catwoman for long :p

eason

@eason: Did you listen to the cast? I talk a lot about what I like about Wood’s writing in both the interview and the Conan #5 review.

In a nutshell I think he’s a very strong writer that prefers to focus on characters to plot, but without ignoring plot altogether as some character writers do. I think there’s pretty much nobody better in comics at contrasting the incredibly intimate with the fantastically epic. I like that he can tackle all sorts of stories and bring his unique viewpoint to it. He has a particularly wonderful (and unusual) way of writing superheroes that I enjoy.

What of his work have you read? I would highly recommend the first Northlanders trade (and all of it, really), his work on DMZ, Demo Volume 1 and Volume 2 (especially volume 2), and the excellent DV8: Gods & Monsters among many many others.

rgsc

Great interview with Brian Wood! I have been really enjoying Conan (never read it before – I was drawn in by Becky Cloonan’s art) and am now eagerly picking up anything else I can find by him. I went to my LCS while listening to this episode where I picked up my copy of The Massive and was also able to get Channel Zero & DV8: Gods & Monsters. It is going to be a BW-filled long weekend for me!
Thanks for the great podcast.